Shockers Expos'd

Final Score
Expos 6
Shockers 4

The Shockers debuted their black shirts last night at le Rinque and also debuted a losing side to their season. Losing last night's game to the Expos is heart-breaking enough, but losing a game due to penalties is disappointing.

"Last night we got called on some bad ones, that's normal in every game. There are always going to be those calls that don't go your way, but, we're not making it any easier on ourselves when we take stupid penalties after the whistle," commented Francois Hamelin after last night's game.

Penalties severe enough to see both Doanld Toohey and Chris Di Sensi get the ref's heave-ho throughout the game.

"It made us pay in the end," added Gary McDermott, "if we take away their power-play goals, we would have won that game."

Penalties aside, it was an all-round breakdown for the Shockers who got trampled by the Expos offense who took advantage of the Shockers' forwards not coming back to be on the boards for the defense.

"We were pretty jammed back there and they picked off a bunch of our clearing attempts and turned them into goals," Jeff Jasmin explained.

Giancarlo Capaz, despite making a large sum of saves throughout the game, was hung out to dry on some of the Expos goals.

"Our passes were on the wrong tape and they put the ball where I couldn't get to it," commented Capaz.

Shockers' big guns were not firing on all cylinders last night either, Steve Towell explained, "we knew what to do and we didn't do it. We shot but kept missing the net, makes it pretty tough to get goals with shots like that."

"The goalie let some soft ones by to boot, but, we couldn't hit the net," added Toohey.

The only thing that the Shockers had going for them was their success on the power-play, even though they were not on very many of them, McDermott showing that he can be a force to be reckoned with on the point. McDermott picked up his first goal and point of the season last night.

"Feels good to break the ice, let me tell you," commented McDermott.

Shockers will have to regroup quickly as they take on the fast and furious Grinders next week. Grinders always made short work out of the Shockers in the past and have been picking up where they left off with their near-perfect season, last season by going 4-0 thus far. However, last season's champs haven't been blowing teams out of the water, so it should be interesting how they deal with the Shockers next Monday. With the Shockers' weakness exposed by last night's game, there will need to be some rethinking about strategies on the part of captain, Alain Godard.